Wednesday, December 5, 2012

When Can You Be Sure?

"They are young now,
and in love. He meets her family over dinner. Later she takes him up the stairs
into her room. They can’t stop laughing, and roll all over her bed. He has
brought her a song, not a lame song shared by others. They listen to it together; lying on her bed, he taps his fingers to the rhythm, she stands with her
hand on his knee.

She sat in the car and
watched him flung his wedding ring into the bushes. She waited for him; he got
into the car and slammed the door. The next moment he gets out and runs
into the bushes to search for the ring. She helps him. Even in the throes of
despair when their love was ready to topple over into unseen depths and never
recover, they have this moment of frantic search for the remnant of earlier
vows.

They are strangers. He
came from a broken home, questioned the need to utilize potential and had an
open heart. She came from a family whose shards were glued for the sake of appearance,
jumped from one bed to another in search of love and believed in her potential. He can’t
get her out of his mind. She reluctantly indulges his wooing. They end up tap
dancing and singing goofy songs. He tells her on the subway‘Let’s
be a family’. She comes home, shuts the door, lies down and waits for the feeling to sink in. A shotgun wedding follows; a baby is in the offing.
Their story starts five years later.

He teaches their daughter to eat breakfast like a leopard; and reminds his wife to wear seat-belts. They are monogamous. They hold each
other in grief. They make efforts. She plays along to his whimsies. But when he
tries to kiss her in the shower, she turns her face away. She cries over a dead
dog and so much more. One day they let unequal ambitions and achievements creep
in and grow roots.

He is forced to walk away."

When can you be sure? When can you put your feet up and
relax? Will love ever be enough? Why leave? Why stay? How long will hope triumph?
Do you have the courage to let go? Do you have the courage to get the one you love?
Will it survive?